writing

Writing on Wednesday: Deadlines

/ kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

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Deadlines are simultaneously the most motivating thing I’ve ever experienced when it comes to writing and the worst thing ever. Most of my writing life, I don’t have a major deadline approaching. I had all the time in the world to write Persephone. Then while it was in queries, I had a ton of time to write Daughter of the Earth and Sky. Iron Queen was the first book where I had even close to a deadline. A year while the other two books released, which would have been nothing if I wasn’t student teaching at the time.

I had a ton of time to work on Aphrodite, but then I needed a break from that world. Instead of immediately going to book two, I wrote an outline and took a break to write something outside the daughters of Zeus universe. I finished that draft at about the same time I got picked up by Belle Bridge, then started work on Love and War in ernest.

Then something unexpected happened. In revisions for Aphrodite, a huge chunk of my…not plot, but character development and subplots for Love and War got shifted to Aphrodite, leaving me with all the events for book two, but none of the character reactions/conflicts were right anymore.

It was a good move, by the way. Aphrodite became a much better book for it. But man did it leave me in a bind. Content revisions for Aphrodite ended in November, leaving me three months to basically rewrite the entire second book from her new perspective, which changes how she reacts to things, which changes, not the big picture, but how she GETS from point A to B to C. Not to mention those subplots.

So for the first time in my writing career, I’m writing on a super ultra deadline. I’ve got a daily word count I have to meet if I have any hope of getting this done, and I have to meet it every day without fail. I’ve got about two weeks left and it’s going well. Incidentally, the quality of the books should not suffer at all for the deadline. This is my deadline to get it to the publisher, but once there it’s going to go through multiple rounds of intense edits and they get it way in advance of publication so there’s plenty of time for those edits.

But man do I have mixed feelings about that daily word count. On the one hand, I slip into the writing zone much easier now. Before, I wrote every day, but some days that was a few paragraphs, and some days it was over ten thousand words. The over ten thousand word days were awesome. I felt like I was almost buzzing with words, they just poured out of me and time just stopped existing. The paragraph days were awful because I was trying to force myself into that zone and sometimes it just didn’t happen. But if I didn’t try every day, then days would turn into weeks and it was that much harder to get there again, so those awful paragraphs would keep my brain working for the days between the super awesome writing days. With the daily word counts, I’m in that writing zone much easier but I can’t stay as long. I get about halfway to my word count and have to take a break or I just start writing gibberish. Then I get half of the half and have to take a break, then half of that until I’m literally typing a few words, checking the word count, then coming up with a few words again. At the beginning of the day, I’m exhilarated, at the end of the day I’m exhausted. But the good news is, the end of the day crap, fuels the beginning of the next day because somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about how terrible it was, so first thing the next morning, I’m fixing it and moving on from that plot point to the next until I stutter to a halt.

I think there’s value into writing like this, but when I finish Aphrodite, I’m definitely taking a break from word counts for a month. I think maybe alternating months may be a good thing. Take a month and write to the point of exhaustion, then spend the next month not caring about the word counts at all, just making sure I do a bit every day.

What do you think? How do you handle writing deadlines? Do they motivate you or kill your creativity?

 

 

 

And the winner is…Ares!

/ kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

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Enjoy an exclusive, never before seen scene featuring, Ares followed by a live Q&A. Got any questions for the God of War? Post them below. You can also tweet or FB.

 

Ares. Gritting my teeth, I tossed my hair back and unlocked the door. Fiery eyes greeted me, igniting months of pent-up anger toward my . . . what? Ex? Did our brief fling last summer even qualify as a relationship? Hell if I knew.

“Aphrodite.” He stepped forward, the motion seeming almost unintentional as his eyes drank me in. When he came up against my shield, he frowned.

My hand itched to slam the door in his face. Instead, I called up my most dazzling grin, dropped the shield, and threw myself into his arms. “Ares!” I made myself laugh—as if he hadn’t broken my heart—when he picked me up and spun me around. “I haven’t seen you in—”

The word forever caught in my throat. Gods can’t lie. Like, it’s physically impossible. But human sayings have a tendency to get stuck in my head. “Thirteen months.”

“You counted?” A cocky grin lit up his face as he set me down and crossed over the threshold. “Got you something.” He drew a long, thin brown paper bag from his coat and handed it to me.

I withdrew the picture book inside, smiling when I saw the cover. It was a children’s book on mythology. Flipping through the pages, I saw tiny envelopes begging to be opened, three dimensional cut-outs, and a hodgepodge of items fastened to the pages like a scrapbook. As a new goddess, some of the nuances of humanity eluded me. Reading their take on our history, particularly how they framed myths for their children, gave me some insight. It was amazing how much humans got wrong.

I flipped to a page that showed a young girl reaching down to pluck a flower from the edge of the riverbed, seemingly unaware of the frost creeping up the petals. The heading proclaimed the myth of Boreas and Orethyia to be the origin of winter. I turned to another section and my gaze landed on an illustration of Eris, the Goddess of Discord, holding a golden apple between Hera, Athena, and Artemis. I frowned, reading the section title. “The Divine Beauty Contest.”

Ares glanced over my shoulder, his breath familiar against my neck. “If you’d been around back then, you would have won that. Hands down.”

Whatever Ares saw on my face made his grin falter. He backed away. “I would have called, or come by, or something after—” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “I’m sorry. I was stuck in a jar. It’s a long story, and we’re already running late.”

Late? My insides went cold, and I set the book down on the kitchen countertop. “She told you.” Persephone might be a powerful patron, but I’d worried more than once that her naiveté would be my downfall.

“Poseidon got a lead on the missing demigods, so he pulled her into a meeting to talk strategy. Nothing they think I’d be any help with.” He smirked, stepping into my small living room, dark eyes flitting over the slim furnishings. No one took Ares seriously, and he liked it that way. “Hades stepped out long enough to ask me to collect you.” A flicker of concern lit up his eyes as he looked me over. “And I can sense that you have enough power to dreamwalk. So why did he send me?”

Dreamwalking didn’t take much power. But the ability to stay asleep long enough to slip into a dreamscape helped. Persephone understood why peaceful sleeping was an issue for me, so we’d arranged to meet early. If I couldn’t show, she’d ’port in to physically pull me into the dreamscape.

“Believe me, I’m asking myself the same question.” I moved backward until I bumped against the couch. Sitting down, I crossed my legs and studied Ares.

His gaze lingered on my legs for a split second before he caught himself and met my eyes. “Have the nightmares gotten that bad?”

You don’t get to ask about my nightmares. I flashed my teeth at him. After Zeus died, Ares, Adonis, Hephaestus, and I took off on a celebratory road trip, thinking Zeus would never trouble us again. Right up until I’d woken up screaming. “You’re really not going to elaborate on how you managed to get stuck in a jar for over a year? Seriously?”

“No, I’m really not.” His hands stayed in the pockets of his jacket as he leaned against the wall opposite me, putting as much space between us as the small room would physically allow. “Look, I get it. I’m the last person you want to talk to about this, but you need real help, Aphrodite. If this is the full extent of Persephone’s solution, I mean, it’s cute, but—”

“Cute?” I held up my hand. “Let me stop you right there. Our queen is not ‘cute,’ she’s—”

Ares rolled his eyes. “That whole queen thing was never made official.”

“We swore over our powers! How much more ‘official’ does it get?”

“She gave them back after she killed Zeus.”

Not mine. When Zeus created me, he’d thrown in an extra special quirk, making me obedient to anyone in his bloodline who outranked me. Only Persephone outranked me now. But refusing to break the vow of fealty that gave Persephone control of my powers made obedience my choice rather than his. Ares might see the distinction as meaningless; after all, I was hers to command either way. But some days, the subtle distinctions between Zeus’s choices and mine were all that kept me sane.

“She’s strong.” Ares held out his hands in appeasement. “I’m not contesting that.”

I rolled my eyes and picked up my phone, making a show of looking at the time while he talked.

“But strength doesn’t trump knowledge. I’ve been around a lot longer. I know a thing or two about—”

“And we’re officially late.” I tossed the phone toward him before he could elaborate. He didn’t know anything about what I’d been through. If he did, that night would have ended a lot differently.

Ares caught the phone by reflex. “You can’t afford to be seen as weak.”

My nails bit into the palms of my hands. “I know.”

“I don’t think you do.” He crossed the living room, pausing to set my phone down on the arm of my couch. “You bound yourself to Persephone. On one level, her claim to you may help, because no one is going to touch you unless they want to deal with her. But if they do want to get to her or send a message, then you’re a good way to do it.”

“I knew the risks when I swore to her.”

“Did you? Because you made a statement that you didn’t have to. You chose a side—”

“There are no sides anymore.” Zeus’s death might have set me free, but the circumstances of his demise created a major power vacuum and completely upset the hierarchy of gods, who were long accustomed to picking sides and petty squabbles anytime they got together. Right now, everyone had fallen into an uneasy truce. I knew Ares didn’t expect it to last long, but I had hope. This was a new Pantheon. There weren’t as many of us left, and our issues were a bit more meaningful than beauty contests and scandalous gossip.

“In this moment, yes. But peace never lasts. Persephone might slip up or Poseidon could go off the rails—hell, he’s halfway there already. But something is going to happen and we’re going to be at each other’s throats again. We all know it. Why do you think we all spent the last few thousand years in our separate corners, ignoring one another?”

“To make it easier for Zeus to pick you off?” I suggested, studying the half-moon indentions my nails left in my palms. Zeus had been systematically killing off his offspring and absorbing their powers, unbeknownst to the Pantheon. That was, until he abducted Demeter’s daughter and Poseidon’s son. Going after the children of realm-rulers was too great an offense to ignore, so the Pantheon came together and fought Zeus in a bitter battle, heavy with loss.

“You made a statement, Aphrodite. But the only advantage you’ve got to back it up is charm. That’s not always going to be enough.”

I could do shields, healing, glamours, and all the standard stuff as well, but most of the gods that were left had received something extra from both of their parents. I only had one—Zeus. “You mean the charm I used to completely incapacitate you?” I snorted. “I’d say it’s enough.”

Charm, or charisma, is like mind control. If used correctly, I can look any human, and most gods, in the eyes and make them do whatever I want. Lucky me, since gods need worship to survive. Since I’d only been created a couple of years ago, I didn’t exactly have a cult following to support my existence.

Ares shifted, visibly uncomfortable at the reminder. “I’m not one of the gods you should be worried about.”

I frowned, trying to figure out who he thought I should worry about. Athena, probably, though she’d always been friendly enough to me. Poseidon maybe? Only an idiot would let their guard down around him. Still, I considered everyone else in the Pantheon to be a friend.

“Let me help you.” Ares stepped forward, closing the space between us.

I narrowed my eyes. “What I need, you can’t give me.”

Ares gritted his teeth. “Fine. But for now, we need a convincing reason to explain why we’re late, not to mention why we’re showing up together.”

He had a point. The other gods wouldn’t actually ask, but I didn’t want to start the rumor mill churning with the idea that either Ares or I were too weak to dreamwalk without assistance.

“Okay, so it’s the middle of the day in Bangkok.” Ares’s face screwed up in thought. “If we ’port into a traffic jam there, then we could say that we got caught—”

“How did you even survive before me?” I slid my arms around him, shivering when my skin came into contact with his cold jacket.

“Oh.” Ares said, catching on. He lowered his mouth to mine. “Yeah, that’ll work, too.”

His lips burned against mine, warm and eager. Familiar. The kiss deepened, then multiplied. Ten kisses as short as one, one as long as twenty, and the entire universe dissolved into Ares’s touch. For one precious second, I felt like more than a tool. More than Zeus’s abomination willed to life. Someone, not something.

But his kisses were lies. And they hurt more than any truth I’d ever faced. Memories sprang to my mind unbidden. The whisper of fabric, a gentle caress, his lips against mine. What you’re looking for, he’d whispered, I can’t give you.

My back hit the couch, pinning his arm beneath me.

“Are you ready?” he asked, breaking away.

“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice hoarse with what? Pain? Wanting? Whatever this feeling was, I didn’t like it. Or maybe I liked it too much.

Ares pressed two fingers to my forehead and pushed me into the dreamscape.

 

Writing on Wednesday: Make Out Scenes

/ kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

Writing make out scenes is hard from me. I’m from the Bible belt, there’s guilt. When my characters start doing more than kissing, I type like…not my grandmother is watching me. But someone else’s, just to make it more awkward. Some sweet, old lady who doesn’t know me at all and is silently judging how badly I’m going to corrupt her grandchild.

 

Suffice to say, it’s awkward. My screen always fades to black. One day I may get over that, but it won’t be soon.

This  came up in my writers group last week and either I’m not alone and every other writer is just as embarrassed, or every other writer pretends to be because to say otherwise implies you were…into it.

Do male authors have this problem?

Anyway, I don’t know if every other author does it this way, but here’s my process.

Pre-Planning–

I Google “greatest kiss scenes” and read the scenes readers are raving about. Cassandra Clare comes up a lot. There’s tons of movie scenes, book scenes, scenes from tv shows, even comic strips that pop up under that search that tons of people have commented on. I find a few that match the general tone I want to set and then analyze them for what would work in my scenario and what wouldn’t.

To do this I break the scene down into the following categories.

Mechanics. Where are they? What things are around them? Who is moving where? What are their hands up to? When do they kiss? Where do they kiss?

Emotions. How do the emotions play into the scene?

Descriptions. Any awesome turns of phrase? How can I create, not that exact phrase, but the image it evokes in my own words?

Comments. What are people saying about that scene? I’m generally looking for the phrase “I love the way…” The things people notice are amazing. One of my favorite observations from a kissing scene is this one:

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This tends to be where I notice characterization of the actual mechanics.

Of course while I’m going over those other scenes, I’m making notes. My characters aren’t here, they’re there. No, they don’t feel like this, they feel like that. How would I show this? She’d never do that adorable little hop thing, but she might do this. And before you know it, my notes are starting to resemble a scene.

I have to break it down into the craft. Otherwise, I die of embarrassment. Which is ridiculous, I know, but whatever. It works for me. I think. I hope.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the laugh. Let me leave you with a kissing scene from my WIP, Blood and Other Matter.

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I felt myself leaning toward her. Lips so close to hers that the space between us felt like something physical and charged. Like I was holding my hand over a flame. My body buzzed with anticipation. Her breath blended with mine and I realized she was leaning forward too, and the only thing between us was hesitation.
It was one thing to admit we loved one another, we’d always known that. Our feelings for one another may have evolved, shifted contexts, but they were so cloaked in the familiar that there was a comfort to them. This was different. There would be no going back from this. Ridiculously nervous, I cleared my throat. “Can I—“
“Please,” she breathed and we moved together, lips skirting the border of touching and not. This is what had been missing before. Sweetness and fear. In one breath we’d stepped off out safe and familiar cliff and plunged into unknown. But the fall was exhilarating.
The sound of the surf crashing against the sand pulsed through us, creating a rhythm that we fell into. Fear melted into confidence, sweetness into wanting. Almost eighteen years of history led to this moment and it was perfect. Pulling her to me with a level of suave I didn’t know I possessed, I dipped her in my arms, kissing her so deeply I couldn’t tell who was breathing for who. We kissed so long, my lips felt raw but I couldn’t imagine ever stopping. The world narrowed down to my lips against hers, her body against mine, and everything that we were, everything that we’d been through, everything that we felt and feared and hoped for.
Her breathing went ragged and I pulled away, thinking maybe this was moving faster than she’d wanted, but her hands gripped the front of my shirt and yanked me back to her.
“Tess,” I managed, mouth drawn back to hers despite myself. The angle was killing my neck but I barely noticed because her hands were moving under my shirt and I didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with mine. Fortunately, they went solo, acting of their own accord and ran down her slender frame, pulling, lifting her against me.
“Lava,” she gasped. “We’re, uh,” she kissed me again, fingers tangling in my hair. “Standing in lava and stuff.”
“No, I—“ My phone buzzed and I shoved my hand into my pocket to silence it with an impatient click. “I know it’s you.” I’d memorized her kiss, the way she moved against me, her every breath. It was so different than before, so Tess, that I knew I could never be fooled again. Anyone else, anything else, would be a pale imitation. “You don’t have to—I mean, we don’t have to—I’m okay with just—“
I felt her smile and pretty quickly determined that if I could make that happen every day for the rest of my life I’d die happy. “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” she pointed out.
“Well…yeah.”
“I like this.” She kissed me for emphasis. “Let’s see where this goes.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice.

 

 

 

Writing on Wednesday: James Dasher

/ kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

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A few weeks (months? I don’t know, time has been flying lately) ago, James Dashner came to Athens to talk about his new series and answer questions from the audience. I brought my six year old because I’m a terrible evil person and had no sitter. Thankfully, she was very good and did all her talking before James Dashner started his Q&A.

To James Dashner.

It was adorable. She told him that she’s a writer and that her recent project, “The Little Red Hen, only in this version the Hen is a cat,” is a whole ten pages long. “How long is YOUR book?”

Oh, 300 or so pages.

Utter shock from my child.

He was very nice to her and to me. He signed my writing advice book before the actual signing started, breaking the rules to do so (thank you random person for lending me your pen).

His advice?

“Write Every Day. Keep attending conferences. And do your best not to suck! :)”

I learned that he grew up in Georgia, so he comes back this way a lot. He’s a pantser, not a plotter but for his new series he actually outlined everything ahead of time. My approach tends to be write a draft then outline it, then revise. So I understand the struggle. I can’t outline too much before I write because when the story inevitably takes me off outline, I break.

Once the Q&A started, most of the questions had to do with some basics of writing, differences between the movie and the book, and is there any hope a certain character who died in the book will live through the movie. Dashner answered each question well and with a bit of an air of disbelief that his books and characters are so popular.

During the Q&A I didn’t ask any questions because here’s the thing. He’s a YA writer. I know a ton of adults read YA, I’m one of them. But when it comes to author appearances, I think the grown ups should take a step back in deference to the target audience. These are kids who are super into his books and talking to a role model. Kids who are actively being inspired to read and write. And that’s a pretty cool thing to watch all on its own.

Though my daughter did have a question, I had her wait until it was over and she asked him as we were walking out the door.

“Mr. Dashner, did you like the lion king?”

Why, yes he did.

 

Writing on Wednesday: Three Things I Learned During Edits

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For the past few months I’ve been in the editing process for Aphrodite. Edits happen in several stages. There’s content edits, which looks at global issues like plot, sub plot, character development, and pacing. There’s line edits, which keeps those in mind, but mostly looks at things like consistency. The character had green eyes here, blue here. She picked up a cup twice, she walked in the door all ready.

Then there’s copy edits. Copy edits are the nitpicks. Mostly it focuses on grammatical stuff. Is this comma in a right place, did you capitalize your random special magic words consistently, ect.

Most of the time, the books go through each set of edits twice, with the second time being a review of the changes made or questioned. Every time I have a book sent through edits I learn something new. Here are three things I learned this time.

  1. Pointed out and realized are not dialogue tags. Which basically means I can say “Pointing out some random detail.” She pointed out. Not “Pointing out some random detail,” she pointed out.
  2. Editors hate the word like,preferring instead to use the phrase “as if.” Most of the time they leave dialogue alone because it’s less formal, but not always. So avoid it when you can, and be prepared to defend it when you use it.
  3. It is really humbling how many major errors you can miss. Before my book even makes it to my publisher, I’ve taken 2-3 drafts of it through my writers group in 5,000 word chunks. THEN I send the whole thing to a friend who content edits for a living, THEN I send it to a friend who copy edits for a living. THEN I give it to the publisher where it’s run through the gauntlet of edits. I’m thorough when it comes to editing. I don’t just go through and accept changes blindly. I try to learn from my mistakes. After I take the time to review, analyze, and understand each change, I go through and read my story out loud, generally to someone, to check for errors I might have missed. I have a system. Before turning in content edits, I put the whole manuscript through my writers group to make sure none of the global changes I made contradict or slow the pacing. This, I hope, saves my editor some time. Before I turn in line edits, I do a run through of the audio book, before I turn in copy edits, I read the story out loud to my amazing husband. Page proofs, I read to myself and send to a friend or two for a beta read (these aren’t edits, it’s catching things like when formatting leaves a word off). There is a whole team of people staring at/listening to every single word of my book, and I’ll still get all the way to copy edits and find glaring errors I never should have missed. Technically I learn this lesson every time, but it’s still shocking to me.

Edits are a special kind of torture. I love them, I really do. I’d edit all day long to procrastinate on writing something new. Editing takes words on a page and makes them BETTER. It’s a thousand times easier than coming up with entire chapters worth of new words. But it’s still tedious and it’s still really hard not to get defensive when you’re staring at a document that’s hemorrhaging tracked changes. It’s so worth it though. And I’m always so unbelievably impressed with how thorough my editors are. They’re amazing. I could never do their job.

 

 

 

For Real Friday: Time is Money

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On Wednesday I talked a lot about my writers group and how keeping a group like that going takes a lot of time and commitment. For me that time commitment has paid off. I’ve written a lot of books, published most of them, have every reason to believe the others will follow suite, and make enough of the books to keep writing.

Deep down, I want to take credit for that time. I planned for this career my entire life. Every elective I took in high school, every class I took in college, every choice I made along the way was strategically chosen to either help my writing or help me get to a place where I could write full time. I chose to only have only one kid. I chose to give up every Saturday my husband is off (hes off every other weekend) to go to writers group for the last six years. I chose to work from home instead of taking much higher paying in person jobs so I have time to write full time. Believe me, we could use the money, it’s a sacrifice, but it’s one that is starting to pay off economically and definitely pays off in terms of me being happy with my life choices.I made a million other choices and make them every day to protect my writing time and to improve my writing.

I want to take credit for all that planning. I want to take credit for those sacrifices. But I can’t. Because the truth is time is a form of privilege. It costs money. We struggle to get by on his full and my half income, but it’s possible. For many, that’s not an option. Some of those people still become writers or still fulfill whatever their dream is in the tiny bits of free time they’ve managed to eek out for themselves, but for many the idea of free time is a laughable illusion.

But the narrative our society has structured around time doesn’t support that reality. When people say they don’t have time for something, it filters through a listener’s perspective and comes out as “I am lazy.” or “I am not dedicated enough.” We have this underdog mythos so fully ingrained in us that when we hear statements like “it takes a lot of time and commitment,” we hear it as “if you really wanted it enough you’d make that time.”

Time can’t be made. It must be bought. And people genuinely don’t seem to understand that. Don’t believe me? Find a blog, any blog, that mentions a single mom working 2-3 jobs and still can’t make ends meet. Read the suggestions people propose. I promise you someone will suggest she grow her own food to save money. Others will chime in with made from completely scratch meal suggestions to save money, insisting that “it doesn’t take much time.” And it doesn’t seem to once you fall into a rhythm, so I can see why they suggest it. It takes me an hour or two a week to pre-prep freezer or crock pot meals, then the hour or they take to cook a night, less for slow cooker meals, because those I just toss in in the mornings. As someone who has that hour or two a week to make dinners like that, I can attest it saves me a ton of time. It took more at first to figure out recipes and grocery lis, but yeah, eventually it saved time. But that doesn’t matter to someone who literally does not have an hour. Time is like money, once you have it, it’s easier to get more of it, but when you don’t you fall further and further behind and any free bits that you are suddenly gifted with already has a million places to go before you can even begin to be smart with it.

So when I saw it takes time and commitment to become a writer, I’m not downplaying the cost of that time. I don’t mean it as a simple and trite response. Time is a luxury I am fortunate enough to afford.

Writing on Wednesday: A Bit of What I’ve Been Working On

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Here’s a sneak peek at a project I’ve been working on called “Blood and Other Matter” Let me know what you think:

Hours after my mom left for work, I still hadn’t finished studying. Homework didn’t usually take that long, but I’d been really distracted tonight. It took me a while to figure out I was listening for the sound of Josh’s entitlement-mobile bringing Tess home. My books sprawled across the table, open to the pertinent pages and weighed down with pens, sticky notes, and whatever else I could find to keep the pages down. Not that I could remember a single thing I’d read.

Stupid, I thought, giving up on my AP History essay on the evolution of labor laws after the Triangle Shirt-Waste Fire and checking my watch. Way too early for the eclipse. I headed to the back porch anyway, turning off all the lights as I walked through the house and grabbing the telescope, binoculars, and an assortment of snacks. Might as well get comfortable. One major benefit to living in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere was a lack of light pollution. We didn’t even have streetlights.

Binoculars in hand, I laid back on the splitting cushion covering my lawn chair. Telescopes were great and all, but the field of view was limited. I found the giant rectangle of twinkling stars in the Pegasus Constellation and moved my binoculars southwest until they landed on the bright blur of an oval that was the Andromeda Galaxy.

I grinned, shifting to the telescope. There was something deeply satisfying about this celestial scavenger hunt. I enjoyed piecing together the puzzle of the constellations to find the big picture then zooming in on a thousand year old flicker of light to find the devil in the details.

Fascinating as the night sky was, I had a ton of time to kill. As the minutes ticked into hours, the cushion beneath my back felt ever softer and more inviting. My eyelids drooped. The binoculars clattered to the deck as I bolted upright, heart slamming in my chest. Had I drifted off? I glanced upward and saw a red shadow covering the moon. I’d missed half the show.

My hair prickled on the back of my neck. Stiffening, I fought down the irrational idea that someone, something stood behind me breathing down my neck. A sound caught my ear, something between a hushed breath and a sob. I spun around. Nothing, I was alone on the wooden porch.

“Derrick?” The wind whispered my name in voiceless desperation. Derrick!

Needles of white hot pain slammed through my skull with so much force I hit the deck with a strangled cry. The voice, it wasn’t in the wind it was inside of me. Pain washed over me in waves then just as quickly faded. I crouched on the splintered boards breathing hard, cradling my head in my hands.

“—the hell?” I muttered. What was I doing hunched over on the porch? I stood, surprised to find I was shaking. Above me a crescent of white broke free of the moon’s shadow. I’d missed the eclipse. Dampness drew my hand up to wipe my nose, and I started at the sight of blood glimmering darkly on my fingers. “Did I just have a stroke?”

The doorbell rang. What time was it? I glanced at the phone, still fuzzy with confusion. Just after midnight. Who would be—Mom. Had something happened to Mom?

I rushed into the house and nearly tripping over the threshold in my haste. In a matter of seconds I was at the front door, fumbling with the latch and fighting back the memory of two deputies standing at my door. And suddenly I was right back in that moment when everything changed. My mother’s wail and the thud of her falling to the floor echoed through my head on repeat. Only this time I wasn’t too numb to understand what was happening.

You’re the man of the house now, our pastor told me at the funeral. Who the fuck puts that kind of pressure on a seven year old? I gained the presence of mind to glance through the peephole, but there were no deputies on my front stoop. Just a slim girl, whose very shadow I would always recognize no matter how dark the night.

“Tess?” I flung open the door unable to keep the aggravation out of my voice. First she’d ditched me for Josh Worthington, then she’d nearly given me a fucking heart attack knocking on my door and bringing back all that–The sarcastic greeting I had prepped fled from the tip of my tongue and left me speechless.

She was covered in blood.

Covered in blood. That expression gets tossed around a lot, but I’d never really considered what it looked like. Her clothes were red and matted to her body, her face, arms and legs were slathered in red flakes, like skin that got sunburned and peeled into those clumps you could brush off. Most of the gore was dry, but some wet patches glistened in the porch light.

She wasn’t wearing shoes.

“Der,” she sobbed. “Please.” Her voice sounded distant somehow, like she was speaking from somewhere far away. “I couldn’t get in my house.”

That snapped me out of it. “Come inside, quick.” I pulled her through the doorway, shocked brain registering the way her clothes squished under my palm. Bits of dried matter flaked off of her and onto my entryway. “What happened? Are you hurt? Hang on, I’ll call Mom.”

“No!” She clutched at my shirt with clawed hands. “You can’t call anyone. It’s not…” She swallowed hard. “It’s not mine.”

“Then whose is it?” Since when were her nails that long? What did that mater? Why did I keep noticing all these stupid details like they could possibly matter while puddles of gore dripped on my floor. Could one person produce all of this? I glanced out to the street, confirming what I already knew. No car. “Tess, was there a wreck? Did Josh’s car–”

She shook her head, clinging to me with an anguished moan. “They just kept screaming. I didn’t mean to do it, but they just kept screaming.”

I slammed the door and locked it, surprised when my hand left a wet print on the gleaming white paint. “Didn’t mean to do what, Tess! Who was screaming? Your mom?” My gaze turned to her house but all of the lights were off and her mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

“No. Oh God, Derrick! I tried to stop it.” She wrapped her arms around me, trembling like an autumn leaf, red and cracked and frail. “I tried, Derrick, you have to believe me. You have to help me.”

“I believe you,” I assured her, holding her tight. God, she was shaking. Her breath came in sharp, panicked gasps, tickling my neck in the same spot I felt my pulse pounding. “And I’m trying to help you, but you have to let me call somebody.”

“No!” She flinched away like I’d struck her. “You can’t, Derrick. Promise me, please!”

“Why not!” I demanded, in frustration, then took a breath and tried a calmer approach. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s not mine!”

The blood? “Then clearly someone else is hurt. Just…tell me what happened and we’ll figure out where to go from there. Start with the bonfire.”

She went rigid in my arms at the word bonfire and I drew back in confusion. “Tess? Is that it? Did something happen at the bonfire?” She couldn’t have come from the bonfire. It was too far away. She couldn’t have walked all the way from Bankhead Forest. Not at night. Not barefoot. Could she? “Tess!” I grabbed her shoulders. “Come on! What happened? Who was screaming?”

A feverish light gleamed in her eyes. “Everyone,” she whispered.

A chill went up my spine when her lips split into a blood-soaked grin. “Tessa?” My voice turned hesitant as the girl I knew better than anyone in the whole world transformed into something I didn’t recognize. Her expression, that smile, those eyes: the only way I could describe it was gleeful malevolence. I fought the urge to push her away from my house and lock the door. That was ridiculous, this was Tess!

In a flash her expression morphed from glee to terror. “No, no, no, no!” She moaned, pushing away from me, voice stuttering and quaking in fear. “I couldn’t help it. I didn’t mean to. I can’t–” Tess clutched at her head, fingers hooked into claws like she was in pain. Her eyes met mine, wide with terror. “Help me,” she gasped, before she collapsed, eyes fluttering closed.

Grimacing at the overwhelming smell of salt and copper, I caught her on impulse. “Tess!” What was I supposed to do? Call 911? Not until I got some answers. I looked around, trying to figure out what to do, where to set her down, but she was so slick in my arms anywhere I put her would–why didn’t she want me to call anyone? Had she done something? Hurt someone? My mind flashed to that maniacal grin as I considered something worse. Could Tess kill someone?

Never. I took a deep breath and considered what I knew. This was Tess. The girl who used to cry after every class trip to the library because she loved animals and still hadn’t caught on that every animal in every book written for children dies. Tess, who would cross the street and come to my house if she saw a cockroach. There wasn’t a violent bone in her body.

She’s in shock. The smart thing to do would be to tell my mom. Tess probably needed medical attention and–

Her voice echoed in my head. It’s my fault. All my fault. I didn’t mean to.

I froze. Move, do something! But I just couldn’t seem to commit myself to an action. If I did call Mom, would Tess say something incriminating to Mom’s deputies? They didn’t know her as well as I did. Her grin flashed into my head and my throat went dry. What if she did do something?

But what if she was in shock? Josh, and anyone else who’d ridden with him could be bleeding out right now while I stood here like an idiot.

Wait. If she was in shock, then she could actually be hurt. I rushed into the bathroom and laid her in the tub, yanking the first aid kit from underneath the countertop, just in case, and set to work searching for an open wound.

There’s no way she’d still be alive if she lost this much blood. My fingers probed at her skin as though a wound big enough to be responsible for this much bleeding could be subtle. Arteries? No, any of the major arteries would’ve bled out before knocked on the door. I didn’t even find a paper cut. Unless…I swallowed hard and pulled her weird, new, dress-like thing over her head. What was this thing, anyway? And um…wow, why wasn’t she wearing anything else under it?

Okay, back on task. I couldn’t find a wound that could explain all the blood. My hands shook as I draped a towel over Tess’ middle; normally I’d sell my soul to see her naked, but there was nothing even remotely sexy about this situation.

I turned on the faucet, grabbed a towel, and washed the gore off of her. Time passed in a weird haze as I spent what felt like hours scrubbing the dried, hardened crust off her skin. Scrub, rinse, repeat until the sanguine water ran clear. My mind fell into some kind of dumbfounded stupor as I focused on the task with an almost clinical dispassion. If I didn’t think about what I was doing this was easy.

I kept expecting Tess to wake up and tell me this whole thing was just some stupid prank. Maybe one of those TV shows. “What would you do? Well, Derrick here would not call 911 when a girl covered in blood passed out on his porch. Care to explain that logic?”

She’d asked me not to.

Maybe I was the one who needed to wake up. What if I was dreaming?

If this is a dream, when you wake up, tell Mom you need some serious therapy. In the meantime, get under her nails.

I scraped the congealed gunk free from beneath her fingernails. That…was flesh. My stomach lurched, and the fog in my brain fled with a burst of adrenaline as her bloodstained lips and fingernails took on a new light. She’d fought. Tess had used her teeth and nails and she struggled against….what? But I hadn’t found any sign of bruising. No cuts, no scrapes. Nothing to indicate that whatever she’d fought against struck back.

“What happened, Tess? Please, please just wake up.” I begged. What am I doing? I sat back on my heels, hands shaking as I dropped the marred washcloth, abandoning her fingernails. She should be in a hospital, the logical side of my brain argued. She’s unconscious. That alone warrants a 911 call.

Her pulse was steady, her breathing even. If she got worse at all, I’d call 911, but otherwise…I covered my face with my hands. What had I done? Could I get in trouble for not calling the police? What would that go down as? Tampering with evidence? Aiding and abetting? Who the hell knew?

Say you were in shock. That you weren’t thinking at all. You’re on honor roll, your mom’s a public figure. They’ll believe you. I looked to Tess. I’d heard what people said about her when they didn’t think I was listening. The assumptions people made because of her mother, the way she looked, because she was poor, because she missed a ton of school, because of her grades, the list of strikes against her was miles long. If something had happened at that bonfire, and any student there was to blame, the Josh Worthington’s of the world would walk scot-free. The news had proven that time and time again. Girls like Tess made great scapegoats.

No, I wasn’t calling the cops until I found out exactly what happened. Some part of my brain resisted that plan enough to know it didn’t make sense. That this was a bad idea. But I couldn’t acknowledge it. This was too much. I’d been pulled from sleep into some kind of crazy nightmare. Something horrific had happened to my best friend and I was sitting in a bathroom that looked like a crime scene straight out of Dexter. My brain couldn’t handle logic. Couldn’t listen to the voice screaming in my head that she might be hurt in a way I wasn’t qualified to diagnose. That she might not wake up if I didn’t get her help right now. Or that she might not be the only person who was hurt.

Instead I followed instructions. Like there was a list being rattled off in my brain of how to make all of this disappear. I finished scrubbing beneath her nails, then everywhere else. When I was sure she was clean, that not a speck of blood remained on her body, I bleached everything in the bathroom, stripped out of my clothes and scrubbed myself down. Check. Check. Check. Moving on autopilot, I tossed everything cloth I’d interacted with into the wash and finished off the bottle of bleach and hydrogen peroxide.

I almost threw her dress into the washing machine then thought better of it and stuffed the garment into a plastic bag and tied it off. We might need it later for evidence. Of what?

Instead of giving into the temptation of thinking, I moved on to the next item on the list.   Finish cleaning the bathroom. After scrubbing the bathtub with hydrogen peroxide, I plugged the drain and poured half a bottle of bleach into the basin, then filled it with water and let it sit while I mopped the floors with what was left.

I took bleach wipes to the bathroom counters, even though I didn’t think I’d touched them, then got Tess and me dressed. Once she was tucked into the bed, I went through the house and the front porch.

Bone weary and more than a little sick from fumes, I walked back into the house and opened every window and turned on every fan. The house still wasn’t forensic proof, but it was enough to fool mom. I pulled the plug in the bath and checked on the clothes. White as snow. I’d have to close all the windows later and throw the clothes in the dryer. Not to mention replacing all the cleaning stuff I’d used before mom realized her once a year “subscribe and save” one click buy hadn’t lasted as long as it should have. But for now, I could rest.

Exhausted and numb, I sat on the chair next to my bed and studied Tess. Her chest rose and fell, so at least she was breathing, even if her face was way too pale.

You did good.

I was too exhausted to care that I didn’t recognize that voice as my own.

Writing on Wednesday: World Building and Historical Fiction

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One of the panels I attended at #YALLFEST was  Moat By Moat: World Building in Historical Fiction, moderated by Libba Bray. Rae Carson, who I already talked about above was also a part of this panel.

A bit about the authors:

0f154bde6523de25a2073ef0e2640203Gail Carriger– Is awesome! She’s a former archeologist who wrote The Parisole Protectorate series, The Custard Protocol series, and my personal favorite, her young adult Finishing School series. I wouldn’t have considered her series to be historical fiction though. She writes supernatural, alternate history, steampunk. The books are comedies so she noted frequently that people forgive her a lot in comparison to other more serious and actually historic setting driven stories. She did sign my book, but she was on her way out the door when she signed it, so I didn’t have the nerve to ask her to sign my notebook. Loved her outfit, she really dresses up like the characters in her novel.

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Elizabeth Wein wrote the Code Name: Verity series, The Lion Hunters series, and Black Dove, White Raven. I haven’t read her books, but she reminded me a lot of me when she talked about her childhood. The clapping game she and her friend made up for Hamlet’s Soliloquy stole the show. I have a video, but you really have to have been there to fully understand the hilarity.

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Ryan Graudin writes alternate history with a supernatural bent, mostly focusing on “What if Hitler had won.” Her books include All that Glows, Wolf by Wolf, and the Walled City. She’s another author I haven’t read, but she’s definitely been added to my TBR pile.

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Carol Weatherford is prolific and probably the most famous author on the panel. She’s written more books than I can list here. A few of her works include Becoming Billie Holiday, The Library Ghost, and Jazz Baby.

The First question Libba asked was where do the authors begin their world building process. Most of the authors agreed finding the voice of the protagonist was their first step. Once they have a protagonist in mind, the setting, a very specific setting, complete with atmosphere, came next. Gail Carriger said most of her stories begin by her “overhearing” snippets of dialogue between two characters, and before she knows it, the rest of the story fills in. Rae Carson mentioned that one thing that really helps her is establishing limits, what they can’t say, what they can’t do, where they can’t go, whereas Elizabeth Wein said she tends to annotate places that need more research as she goes along, and cautioned that sometimes research makes you procrastinate.

I can definitely believe that. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of research, but I’ve also been in situations where I literally can’t write another word until I fill in those details. So I’d say it’s a mixed bag. One acknowledgement I was happy they made is that contemporary settings demand just as much research and world building as historical fiction, at least initially. The authors talked about how they tied personal experience in with their work, even if historically they can’t relate, there’s always a universal experience.

One thing Ryan Graudin and Gail Carriger elaborated on was the juxtaposition of light and dark, of humor and sadness, to echo each other and really bring each other out.

Some of the sins of worldbuilding they agreed on were…

–White washing

— Sugar Coating

— Self-censoring

–Inconsistency

— Forgetting the other senses

Some other tips they offered were to ignore linguistics until line edits (though they also mentioned no recognizable English would have been spoken in many of their settings, so remember you can take liberties). N-grams Google will tell you when a particular phrase originated.

I found the panel to be very entertaining and informative, even though I don’t write historical fiction. I love reading historical fiction though! One day I may delve a bit into the Trojan War, but for now, I’m happy in my contemporary zone.

 

 

Writing on Wednesday: Creativity, Fear, Jealousy and Success

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As you all know, I attended #YALLFEST last weekend and I thought I’d share some notes on the first panel I attended. At the first panel, Gayle Forman, Marie Lu, Libba Bray, Margaret Stohl, Daniel Handler, and Scott Westerfeld talked about creativity, jealousy, fear, and success.

A bit about the authors:

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Scott Westerfeld is the second reason I was there (Brandon Sanderson was my first). He wrote the Uglies series, the Midnighters series, The Leviathan series, Peeps, So Yesterday, Afterworlds and Zeroes. He’s one of my all time favorite authors, and one of the few (who I read) who has been writing YA fiction since before YA fiction exploded after Harry Potter. He adapted beautifully in a way that many other writers weren’t able to. One of the notable things he said in this workshop is that a lot of times when he’s reading he’ll see a particularly good concept or sentence or way something was done and try to figure out how to do something similar himself. Now that he’s famous enough, when he can’t figure out how to do it himself, he steals the author for a collaborative project so he can try to learn from them directly. After all, great writers steal. The way he described reading a book and stopping to go “ooh…” is so much like me. It was crazy listening to these writers interact because they sounded so much like my writer’s group. It was really great to see them interacting, not just with fans, but with writers, because online I get so much of their fan persona, but listening to them geek out with each other and get all excited about the way this author did this, or that author did that, just let me see an entirely different side to them, and that side is something I can identify with so much more.

Also, because Scott Westerfeld is awesome, he hung around afterword to sign my copy of Uglies and to sign my writing journal. His advice: Read lots. Write lots. Listen to everyone.

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Libya Bray wrote The Diviners, Beauty Queens, Going Bovine, and the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. I recently discovered her through Beauty Queens and then when I pulled an all nighter reading The Diviners. She was the moderator of the panel, so while she asked great questions, she didn’t actually give much input because the focus was on the authors answering. She did stick around to sign my writing notebook though.

Her advice: Take Risks. Read Everything. Let your freak flag fly. Revise. revise. Revise. Oh, and have fun!

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Gayle Forman is the writer of If I Stay and Where She Went. I didn’t get a chance to get her autograph, though I did see her after the panel. But…she was deep in conversation with her eight year old and it just felt too rude to interrupt. She had some interesting notes on the book to movie process, along with Daniel Handler and Margaret Stool about how basically authors have nothing to do with how the movie is made, and the best way to approach hollywood is to take the money and run.

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Marie Lu wrote the Legends series and the Young Elites series, which I am now adding to my TBR pile, because she seemed pretty cool. She, Libba Bray, and Margaret Stohl went off on an interesting tangent about feminism and how one of the things she’s jealous of is how guys can interact on a publicly different level than girls can. They can poke fun at each other or maybe not congratulate one another on release days or not over analyze every word they say to make sure it’s not misinterpreted. Watching the guys handle that discussion was interesting because it put them in a kind of awkward situation where they couldn’t do the standard panel interrupt and share their thoughts without being the guy cutting off the girl. It was an interesting discussion.

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Margaret Stohl wrote the Beautiful Creatures series and elaborated a bit more on going hollywood and how weird it is to be kind of behind the scenes of your own creation. She admitted to being jealous of the way some authors seem to flawlessly project themselves through social media. She also said the year her book was being made into a movie was the worst year of her life.

 

American childrens author Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket pictured at The Guardian Hay Festival 2006

I didn’t realize that Daniel Handler was Lemony Snicket, and now I feel ashamed and like I squandered an opportunity to hang on his every word. One of the other authors noted that they were jealous that he (and he quickly pointed out and his wife) donated a million dollars to planned parenthood. He was jealous of a wine bottle.

The wine bottle story needs further elaboration, but I’ll never be able to match the way he told it. So he was checking out somewhere that there was a huge tower of wine bottles when one suddenly fell from the top of the pyramid. The guy checking him out caught the wine bottle and set it down without so much as breaking his sentence. No one else stopped, no one else stopped or acknowledged how awesome that was, leading Handler to assume this kind of thing just happened all the time. He wishes that he knew someone could catch him that effortlessly and with that much grace and confidence.

I’m racking my brain for more tidbits from this awesome panel and coming up dry. I hadn’t settled into the note taking yet and this panel began what was a very long and very amazing day. I keep hoping a video of these panels will pop up on youtube so I can jog my memory. But mostly, I just sat in awe of the fact that I was in the same room as Scott Westerfeld. Great way to begin a day. But the biggest tidbit I got from the panel is that it’s okay to use your jealousy. Use it to become a better writer. Use it to motivate yourself. Just don’t get petty or disheartened by it.

Some (Temporary) Changes

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Photo on 11-16-15 at 4.59 PM

So I’ve run into a problem with my blog format.

I’m out of myths.

I don’t mean I’ve retold every myth that’s ever been, but I have caught up to the myths I’ve used in the Persephone trilogy and the first Aphrodite book (twice). Going further into the myths behind the next two books opens up a world of spoilers, but not even in a fun way since you’ll be missing the context for the spoilers in the next book.

So Mythology Monday is going on hiatus for a while, at least until Aphrodite is released (I should have a date soon. I’m actually waiting on a phone call from my editor to clarify a few details in about thirty minutes.)

But for the meantime, I can’t just not blog. That’s no fun.  I was thinking maybe set up a temporary schedule of Writing Wednesdays, where I talk about what I learned at YA Lit Fest (YALLFEST) and writer’s group and occasionally throw in some of my WIP drafts. I haven’t decided how to approach Monday and Friday yet, but I’m brainstorming some ideas. Maybe mythology Monday could continue with guest blogs? I’d love to hear some of your favorite myths. I’ve been toying with the idea of fairy tale Friday, where  I overanalyze my daughter’s recent disney obsession. I don’t know. But I’m open to suggestions 🙂 What would you like to read about?